Monday, March 13, 2017

Another ‘Crisis,’ Another Gap: This Time, It's the 'Hunger Gap'

It takes less than an hour to drive from some of the most affluent areas of Hunterdon County to the poorest neighborhoods of Newark. The short car trip will paint a startling picture of the highs and lows of hunger in New Jersey.

According to the recently released 2016 Feeding America "Map the Meal Gap" report, the highest concentration of "food insecurity" in the state is in Essex County. The study identifies the number of food insecure residents in every county across the country, as compared to the population of the county, to determine a "food insecurity rate."

At 18.6 percent of the population, Essex has the highest rate of any county in New Jersey. Hunterdon reported the lowest rate in the state, 6.4 percent. Overall, more than 1 million residents in New Jersey, or about 11.8 percent of the state's population, are "food insecure," the term the USDA uses to indicate people who lack access to enough food to live healthy lives.

The rest of the article highlights the plight of the “food insecure” and the “pervasiveness of hunger” in America, which includes people who make too much money to qualify for federal food programs. My focus here is not to debate the validity of these surveys or conclusions about hunger (now labeled the much more vague “food insecurity”) in America. My point is to challenge the egalitarian frame of reference.

I left these comments:

Another day, another “gap.”

What do “some of the most affluent areas of Hunterdon County” have to do with the fact that some people in Newark have struggles with their food budgets? More precisely, what relevance is the fact that 8 million New Jerseyans have achieved a measure of economic success as to not have food struggles? Why talk of a so-called “gap” between the 8 million and the 1 million who have the problem of food insecurity, as if human economics is a zero-sum game where the gain of some comes at the expense of the loss of others?

This is more than just a propaganda piece for another redistributionist government handout program. As soon as I read the first sentence—“It takes less than an hour to drive from some of the most affluent areas of Hunterdon County to the poorest neighborhoods of Newark”—a red flag went up in my mind. A literal Red flag. What’s at work here is the exploitation of the alleged and often very real struggles faced by some people to push the Left’s hateful anti-economic inequality crusade. The anti-inequality crusade is essentially a socialist, i.e., communist, agenda. Yes, that communism; the great equalizer of economic outcomes, and thus the great destroyer of upward mobility, ability, excellence, achievement, good parenting, virtue, prosperity—and, above all, the destroyer of the hope of ever working up from poverty, as that can never be allowed for fear of someone becoming “unequal.”

Economic inequality is the sign of a just society where people are politically free to lift themselves, through learning, work, and trade, as high as their ability, ambition, values, and personal circumstances will carry them. Gaps, in other words, are irrelevant. Economic inequality has nothing to do with some people’s economic struggles. Poverty is the default state of the human condition. That some people—and in substantially free market capitalist countries that means the vast majority—manage to work their way up from poverty is not the cause of the small minority who don’t or won’t.

Studies and articles depicting some group’s relative economic struggles should focus on the barriers that prevent those people from lifting themselves further. If you want to use it to call for voluntary charity for someone you know who fits the bill, fine. But it is shameful to sneak in a sinister political agenda. We should celebrate achievement on all levels, not demand a utopian equality that runs counter to human nature.

I got some pushback from other correspondents in the comments section of the article. I’ll have more to say on this in my March 17, 2017 post.

1 comment:

Mike Kevitt
said...

I'm focusing on the 2nd. to last paragraph of this posting, which starts with the word, "Studies". It's certainly good to call for voluntary charity. But the barriers to success must be made public, and something must be done to remove them if they're violations of individual rights, whether by unjust legislation, executive orders or judicial rulings, or by unjust private action. Otherwise, charity in a given case will always be needed, without end.

About Me

Greetings and welcome to my blog. My name is Michael A. (Mike) LaFerrara. I sometimes use the pen or "screen" name "Mike Zemack" or "Zemack" in online activism, such as posted comments on articles. “Zemack” stands for the first letters of the names of my six grandchildren. I was born in 1949 in New Jersey, U.S.A., where I retired from a career in the plumbing, building controls, and construction industries, and still reside with my wife of 45 years. The purpose of my blog is the discussion of a wide range of topics relating to human events from the perspective of Objectivism, the philosophy of reason, rational self-interest, and Americanism originated by Ayn Rand.

As Rand observed: “The professional intellectual is the field agent of the army whose commander-in-chief is the philosopher.” I am certainly not the philosopher. But neither am I a field agent, or general. I am a foot soldier in that Objectivist army that fights for an individualist society in which every person can live in dignified sovereignty, by his own reasoned judgment, for his own sake, in that state of peaceful coexistence with his fellow man that only capitalist political and economic freedom can provide. While I am a fully committed Objectivist, my opinions are based on my own understanding of Objectivism, and should not be taken as definitive “Objectivist positions.” For the full story of my journey toward Objectivism, see my Introduction.

One final introductory note: I strongly recommend Philosophy, Who Needs it, which highlights the inescapable importance of philosophy in every individual's life. I can be reached at mal.atlas@comcast.net. Thanks, Mike LaFerrara.

Recommended Essays/Videos

Quotes I Like

Let me give you a tip on a clue to men’s characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it. Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.—Francisco d'Anconia

I love getting older...I get to grow up and learn things. Madalyn, 5 years old, Montesorri student, and my grand-daughter

The best thing one can do for the poor is to not become one of them. Author Unknown

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. Francis Bacon

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. Ronald Reagan

Thinking is hard work. If it weren't, more people would do it. Henry Ford

Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries. Ayn Rand